


Child Ballad No. 78

by CoffeeAndTin



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Emma Cullen - Freeform, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Tumblr: mag7week, Unbeta'd, Vasquez - Freeform, but nothing too graphic, character injury, descriptions of violence and injury, mentions of joshua faraday, mentions of matthew cullen, vague reference to The Equalizer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 09:52:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12208848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeAndTin/pseuds/CoffeeAndTin
Summary: Vasquez is injured, and left in Emma's care.





	Child Ballad No. 78

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the “Aftermath” prompt for Mag7 Week. Fair warning: I’m gonna wax sentimental in this note. I started this the better part of a year ago. (I don’t think Magnificent Seven was even out of theaters yet.) It was the first thing I’d written in a really long time, and I'm just so grateful to this movie for reviving a hobby/passion that I'd pretty much given up on. Initially, I'd had plans for a sprawling story involving Vasquez's past, and outlaws, and bounty hunters and the rest of The Seven. What I stopped with was a hurt/comfort-laden chapter with (an entirely platonic) Vasquez and Emma: two people who aren't very good at being vulnerable. Mag7 Week was the perfect opportunity to dust it off. The title is from the English folk song of the same name (also called The Unquiet Grave). It was featured in season two of Penny Dreadful. I hope you enjoy.

Emma had been worlds away, but a stirring from her right interrupted her thoughts. She turned in her chair to see that Vasquez’s sleep had become fitful. Setting down the book she had yet neglected to begin reading, she stood and closed the small distance between her and the bed where the wounded outlaw had been convalescing for the past several days.

“Vasquez?” she tried. “Vasquez?”

No reply.

Bending at the waist, she put a cool hand on his forehead. The fever was still burning through him. She wondered if she should wake him and get him to drink more tea. Emma removed her hand then pressed it to his shoulder. Again, no response. Vasquez’s left hand –the one that was uninjured –grasped the blanket that covered him from the chest down. The corners of his mouth drew downward into a grimace; and his brows, dappled with sweat, knit themselves together. His head moved back and forth on the pillow, and he made a noise in the back of his throat. Concern touched Emma’s intelligent, green eyes. Perhaps it was an abortive word, or just an animal sound made in discomfort.

Vasquez’s grip on the sheet tightened and his breathing became harsher. Emma looked at the doorway, hoping the doctor would materialize, but she knew he had gone to the mine (A worker had suffered a broken limb.), leaving her there to watch after the practice and Vasquez. Bumping her long, red braid from her shoulder so that it fell behind her, Emma walked to the basin that held fresh water. Wringing out the cloth, she crossed back over to her charge. Emma balanced on the side of the bed, and dabbed the cool cloth on his forehead, avoiding the cut on his left eyebrow.

“No,” he said softly, continuing to shift in his sleep.

“Shh,” she hushed him, and continued down his neck with the cloth.

“Shh, you’re okay,” she said, very much doubting that her words would reach him.

Whatever unpleasantness was running through his mind, she guessed that the root of it had been there long before the fever had ever taken hold.

Vasquez made a choked noise and began muttering in his native tongue. Emma regretted that she could not understand him. Perhaps what he was saying would yield some clue as to what seemed to be haunting him.

His movements became more erratic, and his legs, Emma noticed, were quickly becoming ensnared in the bedclothes. The more entangled he became, the more he struggled. Cautiously, and earnestly she shook Vasquez’s left shoulder, meaning to wake him. There was only so much she could do to allay his physical pain, but she could at least spare him whatever was plaguing his mind.

“Vasquez,” she said, louder than before. “Vasquez!”

“ _Por favor_ ,” he rasped, still lost to the waking world.

Emma required no translation for the phrase. She didn’t know Vasquez well, but she knew he was quick with a smile, and good in a fight. The notion that he was the type to beg was utterly ridiculous. A sheen of sweat covered his body once again. Alone, Emma was unsure what she would do if his behavior became as wild as it had when his fever was worse. Ignoring her own safety, Emma got close, laying a hand on each shoulder and shaking.

_Please wake up_ , she thought.

“ _No…No, por favor_ …”

Frustration welled within her. While she generally abstained from the use of bawdy language, more than several unconscionable words played in her mind.

She remembered several nights before when members of The Seven had dragged Vasquez’s tattered, bloody body into the doctor’s surgery. It was an inauspicious return to Rose Creek, to be sure. Once they’d laid him on the table, Faraday kept a hand on Vasquez’s shoulders in an attempt to keep his friend still and calm. Emma saw tenderness in the gesture; tenderness that was doubtlessly uncommon in the gunslingers’ world. That very thing had been stripped from her own life, and now she and this band of men had become connected, for better or worse.

They’d left. Why hadn’t she? She could have.

_Should have_ , she thought.

Now they were back in her life; and she considered that they had brought the shade of her own grief back with them. She beat back those thoughts. She knew they were products of her own weariness. Nothing more.

Vasquez’s cries were becoming louder, more strained.

“Diego!” she shouted.

Crying out, Vasquez sat bolt upright, chest heaving. His gaze shifted warily around the room.

Standing back from the bed, she noted the way Vasquez’s dark, unfocused eyes and mussed hair lent him the appearance of a trapped, feral thing.

“It’s just me,” Emma said, keeping her voice calm and clear. “You’re safe.”

On edge, he sat up further, wincing as the stitches in his torso pulled underneath the meadowsweet poultice and bandages. He was reminded of every wound he had suffered; their cumulative effect making his skin paler than it should have been. Emma stood quietly and refrained from admonishing him against movement, allowing him the small dignity of composing himself. Vasquez drew in a deep, stuttering breath and exhaled slowly and deliberately. He repeated this half a dozen times before looking at Emma, who stood, waiting and watching patiently as a fraction of the tautness eased away from his long limbs.

He began to say something, but stopped, cleared his throat, and licked his lips. Emma poured water into a cup and handed it to him. Accepting it with his left hand, he nodded in gratitude. The corners of his mouth lifted into an attempt at a smile. It did nothing to make him look less miserable. He looked ashamed; and he looked hunted. Emma’s heart went out to him.

“You’ve been in and out for almost two days,” she informed him. Darkness had fallen over Rose Creek only minutes beforehand; the valley had been bathed in soft, scarlet light. “Mister Chisolm and the others left the morning after they brought you here.”

Emma remembered the rest of The Seven leaving. There intentions were unstated, but no less clear.

Vasquez sat, scrutinizing the cup that sat in the palm of his hand.

“Thank you,” he said; his voice quiet and rough with disuse. His joviality was conspicuously absent.

Emma nodded and stepped forward, extending a hand. Vasquez handed her the tin cup and she gave him more water, which he tentatively sipped as he relaxed a little more. When he was finished he handed the cup to Emma who set it on the counter before preparing some supplies. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he rubbed his face and eyes with the heel of his hand. For a fleeting moment, he looked more like a weary child than an outlaw.

***

Vasquez studied the three broken fingers on his right hand. They’d started with his pinky, moved to his ring finger and then skipped over to his trigger finger. It was impossible to guess how straight they would heal, or if he would ever recover the full function of them, but his splinted digits were already far less swollen than they had been. It was some relief, he supposed. He’d had broken fingers before, though they’d never been so cruelly bent. Running his left hand through the waves of his hair, he took a mental inventory of the rest of his wounds. The bite from their dog on his left ankle (If they hadn’t pulled the animal away, he was confident that it would have torn his foot off) ached wildly, but it paled in comparison to the laceration on the right side of his abdomen. It was hot and painful. Infected, he knew. It was the reason he sweated while he felt a deep chill within him.

He closed his eyes and reached his left hand up to find the pendant missing from its place at the base of his throat. His hand slid around his throat to the nape of his neck. The necklace was gone. He frowned. He made it a point not to get too attached to possessions, but the necklace’s absence made him feel that much barer.  

“Oh,” he heard from the other side of the room. “Here. I kept it for you.”

He looked to see Emma produce his necklace. She’d been keeping in her apron. He smiled at this.

“Thank you,” he said, unable to account for the relief he felt at the sight of the familiar, silver bauble.

Emma nodded, and returned his smile as she handed him the pendant.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “What is it?”

“A Saint,” he said; though which Saint it was, he could not be certain. Was it Jude? Anthony? The man who had worn it before him had said both at one time or another, in various states of inebriation.

Vasquez was grateful that Emma seemed satisfied with his answer. When Vasquez was younger, he had run with a gang out of the New Mexico territory. There had been two men named Les. There was Les, who was little more than a boy; and there was Old Les, who had barely reached the age of thirty. The nickname seemed –to some extent –to grant Old Les deference, so he did nothing to dissuade its use. As Old Les lay dying of a bullet in his lung, he’d taken the pendant between his thumb and forefinger, staining it with blood.

“Take this goddamn thing,” he’d told Vasquez, smiling even as he grew cold and gray. Vasquez knew that the older bandit had taken the necklace from the body of a man he had killed a few months before that. Old Les had since worn as a sort of religious mockery. “Ain’t got no use for it no more.”

Vasquez had accepted the dying man’s command. (Old Les hadn’t been one to make requests.) Vasquez had cleaned the pendant, changed the cord, and wore it ever since. At least it was reflective of the religion with which he, himself, associated as best he could. Occasionally, (though he would never admit it aloud) he needed the idea that forgiveness and salvation could be attained no matter how hopeless the belief seemed.

Emma scooted her chair closer to his bed and sat down with her hands folded in her lap.

“How’s the pain?”

Vasquez shrugged as he looked down at the necklace and ran his thumb over it. He thought to lie, but Emma’s steadfast expression asked him, respectfully, not to. Running his teeth over his bottom lip, he sighed. Memories of the events of the past week, as well as images from his nightmares flitted through his mind, refusing to leave him.

“My side is the worst of it,” he said, as though even that were a trivial wound.

“The infection was bad,” Emma said. Something passed behind her eyes that told Vasquez that his caregiver was understating the matter. “The doctor had to debride the wound on your side and the bite marks on your ankle. It’s going to hurt, but your fever should hopefully keep coming down now.”

His own pain and Emma’s expression quickly disabused him of the notion that he should take her words as permission to leave the doctor’s practice.

“We should change your bandages,” Emma told him as she stood and retrieved her supplies before setting them on the bedside table.

He looked at the implements and was reminded of Faraday’s difficult recovery after the events of Rose Creek. Emma gripped a pair of scissors in her delicate hands.

“Can you lean forward a bit?”

The glint of candlelight on the shears made his stomach do a summersault, but he did as she asked nonetheless. At his back, Emma slid the scissors under the bandages. The sensation of metal on his flesh set his teeth on edge. Emma seemed to sense this and paused. She stepped in front of him and met his gaze. He shook his head.

_I’m fine._

She nodded, concerned, but not patronizing. Emma continued her work, beginning to remove the bandages.

“Go ahead and lie back,” she said.

Bracing himself with his left arm, Vasquez began to recline, only to find that he was unequal to even that small task.

“Here,” Emma said, unruffled.

She proffered her left hand. After a moment, he accepted it, necklace still looped around his own hand. Emma supported his shoulder with her right hand and aided him in lying down. Refusing to be entirely prone, he propped himself up on his elbows, and looked on as she continued removing the gauze.

“Mister Faraday was right,” Emma said, as she began to pull the bandage and poultice away from the wound. “You are heavy.”

Vasquez puffed air out through his lips and smiled despite himself. Vasquez, in his fever-addled state, had been less than inclined to cooperate with the doctor. He remembered, suddenly, how Faraday had groused, “Christ, we didn’t drag your carcass back here just for  _our_  health. Goddamn, you’re heavy.”

“Even broken clocks are right twice a day,” Vasquez said.

That earned him a genuine smile from Emma. Her small, sullen features became softer, a little less troubled. Vasquez tried to remember if he’d ever seen her really smile before. Probably not. The circumstances of their last meeting had certainly not left her with many reasons to be cheerful. But she had survived; she was healing herself and her town. Vasquez didn’t need to ask why an apprenticeship with the doctor appealed to her. The fierce little slip of a woman who had avenged her husband and Rose Creek against Bogue sat high in Vasquez’s estimation.

Emma removed the bandage, quietly apologizing as it was pulled away from his damaged flesh. The only indication of his discomfort was the way his hand clenched around his necklace. She gently prodded the area around the wound, her smile replaced with professional concentration.

“This is looking much better,” she told him, and nodded to herself approvingly.

With reluctance, he looked from Emma to the infection on his torso. The laceration ran nearly a foot downward from the bottom of his ribcage. It was red and warm, but there was no longer puss. Whoever had stitched the wound had done so with neatness and precision. Emma moved to the foot of the bed, and folded the blanket back to reveal his bandaged ankle. Vasquez swallowed as he remembered the animal’s vicelike grip as it unrelentingly wrenched its head back and forth. Emma unwound the bandage there as well. The skin was equally swollen, red and raw.

“This is looking better, too,” she said. She paused, as though she was wondering if she should say what was on her mind. “The doctor said that if you’d gone any longer without treatment, you might have lost your foot.”

There was no witty rejoinder that came to mind. He was sure Faraday would have something to say on the subject, but Vasquez felt his mouth go dry and his body go hot. He was lucky, or blessed. Maybe both? People survived without limbs; he knew that. But to be made incomplete in that way? The idea made him want to scream.

“You’re lucky, though,” Emma said, forcing a smile into her voice, sensing his discomfort with the subject. “Now you’ll only be bedridden for a little while.”

His chuckle was an uncomfortable one, but was more thankful for the levity than he could possibly have said.

Emma briefly left his side to put water on to boil then returned. She worked in silence, cleaning his wounds, applying fresh poultices and then bandages. Aside from the occasional sharp intake of air, Vasquez made no complaint. He just watched as she went about her business. She helped him sit back up so that she could rewrap his abdomen then aided him in lying back down. Vasquez rested on the flat of his back, looking up at the ceiling. He swept his hand over his face.

_Too hot_ , he thought as he tried, and failed, to move the blanket off of his body.

Emma accomplished the task for him then put a hand on his forehead. He was surprised at her tenderness. Vasquez closed his eyes; the cool touch of her hand was a welcome one.

“Your fever must be breaking,” she observed, relief in her voice.

She walked away and finished preparing the tea. As Emma stirred the tea, Vasquez listened as the spoon  _tinked_  along the glass; he found such a lighthearted noise mesmerizing. Smiling, he closed his eyes. She brought the cup over to the bed, setting it on the table to allow it to cool. Leaning over her patient, Emma picked up Vasquez’s right hand and checked the fingers over then set it back down at his side.

“I don’t think I ever apologized for lassoing you,” he said, beginning to feel a little more like himself.

“No, I don’t suppose you did,” Emma said, the tone of her voice indicating that she had long ago forgiven him for what had been a relatively practical action at the time.

“Well,” he said, “I am sorry.”

“You’re forgiven.”

The events of the past several days were reflected in their wan smiles.

“Here,” she said, picking up the tea after a moment. “You should drink this.”

Slowly, he rolled onto his side and accepted the teacup, the delicate thing seeming incongruous in his calloused grip. If Emma found humor in it, she didn’t say so. Faraday would have doubtlessly guffawed with exuberance at the sight. He leaned forward and took a sip, but the smell and the bittersweet taste of the tea (laced with opium, he realized) made him choke as memories from several nights ago came flooding back. He felt the heat of the tea as it slopped over onto his hands as he coughed.

Emma took the cup before he could spill too much of its contents. Vasquez put a protective hand over wound on his side while every ache in his body cried out. He cursed vehemently under his breath.

When they’d first brought him to the doctor’s practice, he had not been in his right mind. Wild with fever, he’d struggled against his friends and Emma and the doctor. Delirium had overtaken him, but he could remember bits and pieces: Sam hushing him and holding his arms, Faraday holding his head still. Goodnight standing behind Sam. Jack holding his legs, and quoting scripture and praying.

“It’s okay,” Emma said, suddenly at his side with a cloth.                                

Slowly, Vasquez uncurled himself, and Emma dabbed the tea from his mouth and beard.

“Sorry,” he rasped.

“It’s okay,” she said again, patting him on the shoulder. He was sure the gesture was meant to be reassuring, but it seemed that she did so because she was uncertain what else to do. She then refilled the cup, and brought it back to him.

Vasquez took the cup, but stared down at it, not hiding his chagrin in the least.

“I…” he paused, uncertain of what his argument was. “I’ll be fine.”

Vulnerability, he knew, suited neither one of them.

“You need to rest.”

“I am resting,” he argued.

“It’ll ease the pain,” Emma offered, looking down at him.

He sighed, realizing he was behaving like a child.

“It’s what the doctor recommended,” Emma said, as she picked up her book and sat in the chair next to the bed as though she could not care less what he did. “I can’t make you.”

The way Vasquez felt, he wasn’t entirely certain that was true; but all the same, he swilled the tea in two gulps before setting the cup on the table as he fought down the urge to gag. He leaned on his side and turned his attention back to Emma.

“What are you reading?” he asked, not surprised in the least that Emma was educated enough to read.

She looked up from the page.

“ _The Moonstone_ , by Wilkie Collins,” she said.

Vasquez didn’t bother pretending to recognize the title or the author.

“Where do you get books all the way out here?”

Emma didn’t answer for a long moment, and Vasquez became certain that he could guess the answer.

“Matthew…my husband. He had a collection,” she explained. “I thought it was a frivolous thing to bring out her, but…”

Vasquez swallowed, and opened his mouth to apologize but no words came out.

“It’s fine,” she said, smiling sadly, and folding the book shut. She ran a gentle finger over the spine. “We used to read to each other. They were some of my favorite times with him.”

Silence sat unbearably between them, and Vasquez wished to the heavens he hadn’t asked about the damn book.

Entertaining thoughts of limping out of the practice, saddling his horse and leaving Rose Creek forever, Vasquez was surprised when Emma reopened the novel and began reading it aloud. Time passed. Neither could have said how long.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emma watched Vasquez watching her, and she paused. Vasquez smiled lopsidedly at her.

“Mmm?”

“My mother used to sing to me,” he said. “Before bed, or if I was ill.”

Vasquez’s mouth smiled, but something passed behind his gaze at his own mention of the memory. Other than the opium, he could not account for his sudden openness.

“I’m sure it was lovely,” Emma said.

Vasquez moved his head up and down slowly; and both he and Emma smiled small, rueful smiles. Silence reclaimed the room until Emma began to read again.

After a time, he found it difficult to focus on the words. He rose with the rasp of paper at the turn of a page, and sank in the cadence of her voice.

***

Emma stopped reading when the opium and fatigue had taken their toll on Vasquez. He breathed deeply, and evenly, his necklace still clutched in his hand. Privately, Emma smiled at this.

She continued to sit in silence until the doctor returned. He walked into what they called the “recovery wing,” greeting Emma and inquiring about their patient. Emma filled him in.

“I can sit with him to make sure a fever doesn’t become an issue through the night,” he told her.

“It’s no bother,” Emma said. “I was just enjoying a book. If he needs you, I’ll be sure to get you.”

He bid her a good evening with a nod and a kindly smile. Emma returned to her book, but vacillated between reading and reflecting. She sat with the novel open on her lap before she fell asleep, her mission to read through Matthew’s entire collections, postponed.

Something woke her. A night bird called out somewhere above the still town, but that wasn’t it. The candles burned low, but in the flickering light she could see that Vasquez’s sleep was once more becoming plagued by something unknowable.

Emma reached down and placed a hand on Vasquez’s shoulder, uncertain if she should shake him, or simply hush him. When Vasquez’s head began to move from side to side on his pillow, Emma moved her hand from his shoulder to his forehead. Relatively cool compared to what it had been.

He made a small, worrying sound.

“Shh,” she said. “You’re safe.”

His breathing was picking up, and his features bunched with the effects of illness, and what looked like fear and sorrow.

“Hey,” she tried, opting to shake his uninjured shoulder, but to no avail.

Vasquez’s left hand wandered fretfully over his chest. Rather than allow him to undo his bandages, Emma sank down onto the mattress and took his hand in both of hers.

His head continued to shift on the pillow, and he grasped her hand in his tight, insensible grip.

“No,” he begged of an unseen threat.

_Not again_ , she thought as she continued to hush him. The fever had abated; it was more than just physical unease dogging his dreams.

“ _No._ ”

She ran her thumbs over the back of his hand. None of the gesture’s gentleness reached her features. She frowned as she tried, and failed, to quiet him. She was so tired, and she didn’t know what else to do.

Frustrated and weary, she found herself singing.

“My breast is cold as clay,” Her voice cracked at first; and it was off key. If anyone had been listening, they wouldn’t have found it unpleasant, though. “My breath is earthly strong. And if you kiss my cold, clay lips, your days will not be long.”

Vasquez’s breath hitched, but he stopped pleading.

“How oft on yonder grave, sweetheart, where we were wont to walk…” a tear slid downward on Emma’s cheek. It flashed amber in the candlelight.

“The fairest flower that e’er I saw…has withered to a stalk.”

Emma ignored the wetness on her cheeks. Rather, she focused on Vasquez. His body settled, and his features became less anxious.

“When will we meet again, sweetheart? When will we meet again?”

Perhaps on some level her voice was reaching him. His breathing was less rapid, and the grip he had on her hand went slack.

“When the autumn leaves that fall from trees are green, and spring up again.”

She held his hand and wept.

 


End file.
